Hatake Kakashi Doesn't Believe in Omens
by Mary B. Wolf
Summary: Because Hatake Kakashi doesn't believe in omens but they believe in him and they haven't told him that he would die today.


A year before his mother goes on the trip that kills her, four-year-old Kakashi has a dream in which she dissolves into mud and he never sees her again, though he searches long and hard.

A mud slide buries his mother and her entire party of travelling companions. Their bodies are never recovered.

Six hours before his father commits seppuku, nine-year-old Kakashi fails to block a blow from a teammate during a weapons spar and gets a shallow cut from his ribs to his pelvis.

He goes home, bandages it, and opens his father's office door, just in time to see the White Fang slit his stomach open.

Two days before his first mission as a jonin, thirteen-year-old Kakashi could swear he sees his left iris bleed red in the bathroom mirror.

He leads his team and rocks fall; Obito gives him his blood-colored eye.

Only seconds before Minato-sensei gives his life to seal Kyuubi away into his infant son, fifteen-year-old Kakashi hears the wail of a baby overlaid on the scream of an enraged fox.

He watches as the demon fox is trapped in the tiny yellow-haired baby, as his Hokage falls, as his village is saved.

A week before Rin dies, eighteen-year-old Kakashi gets an ache in his chest, sharp as a kunai, and it goes again just as quickly.

Rin's body is brought back covered with cuts and blood, but it is determined that the fatal wound was a kunai through the heart.

The day before Team Seven becomes the first to pass his bell test, twenty-four-year-old Kakashi hears a faint tinkling and feels a tug on the waistband of his pants.

The brats don't get the bells, but the get the idea behind them, and that's better than any of the others' tries. They are his first team in years.

The day Orochimaru invades, twenty-five-year-old Kakashi nearly steps on a snake and gets bitten.

He faces enemies in defense of the place he loves, and people he is beginning to care for.

The night Sasuke defects to Sound, twenty-six-year-old Kakashi comes home to see that the photograph of his genin team has fallen on its right bottom corner, cracking the glass over Sasuke and spider-webbing between the remaining three.

He never replaces the glass; Sasuke never comes home.

When he awakens the Mangekyou Sharingan, twenty-seven-year-old Kakashi knows Obito smiles at him. Obito tells him he was the best friend he ever had.

Obito also tells him to use it sparingly. It will kill him if given the chance.

The morning before Asuma dies, on a mission of his own, twenty-eight-year-old Kakashi catches a whiff of cigarette smoke on a breeze.

He returns home to news of the death and takes his comrade's team on the mission to avenge him.

Two months before Pein's invasion of Konoha, twenty-nine-year-old Kakashi hears faint explosions and the shrieks of dying people.

He comes across Iruka and sends him on his way with another injured chunin and turns to face what may be his end.

But it won't be.

Because Hatake Kakashi doesn't believe in omens, but they believe in him and they haven't told him that he would die today.

* * *

Holy crap, I think I wrote my first genfic. Go me! And it was so _hard_ not to put KakaSaku in this. I even had a few planned out--like...they get together and then she dies or something. I actually thought this was going to be more angsty, but I'm more than pleased with the way this came out regardless.

I don't own Naruto, and I have no plans for a corporate takeover which would result in the death of various manga artists.

...No, none at all...

I don't know how many of you actually read my bio, but I mention this there, too. During November, I will be on hiatus. Yay! November is National Novel Writing Month and I plan to participate. This leaves me around two weeks to prepare and (hopefully) get another update for _The Promise _for you guys. For those of you who don't know what that is, you'll have to Google it to get more information--even if I had a link, it wouldn't post here.

--Wolfie-lou


End file.
